I will admit to not being all that familiar with contemporary arguments in the philosophy of religion. However, there are other areas of philosophy with which I am quite familiar, and where I regard the debates as basically settled. According to the PhilPapers survey, pluralities of philosophers of religion line up on the wrong side of those debates. For example, philosophers of religion are much more likely (than philosophers in general) to believe in libertarian free will, non-physicalism about the mind, and the A-theory of time (a position that has, for all intents and purposes, been refuted by the theory of relativity). These are not, by the way, issues that are incidental to a philosopher of religion’s area of expertise. I imagine views about the mind, the will and time are integral to most intellectual theistic frameworks.
The fact that these philosophers get things so wrong on these issues considerably reduces my credence that I will find their arguments for God convincing. And this is not just a facile “They’re wrong about these things, so they’re probably wrong about that other thing too” kind of argument. Their views on those issues are indicative of a general philosophical approach --, one that takes our common-sense conceptual scheme and our pre-theoretic intuitions as much stronger evidence than I think they actually are, and correspondingly takes the deliverances of our best scientific theories much less seriously than I do. I very strongly suspect that their arguments for theism will fit this pattern (reliance on a priori “common-sense” principles like the Principle of Sufficient Reason, for example).
I am familiar with the kinds of arguments made by people who adopt this philosophical outlook—not in the case of theism specificially, but in other domains of philosophy—and I don’t find them all that compelling. In fact, I think they represent much of what is pathological about contemporary philosophy. So I think there is sound evidence that philosophers of religion tend to practice a mode of philosophy which, although quite sophisticated and intellectually challenging, is not particularly truth-conducive.
Their views on those issues are indicative of a general philosophical approach --, one that takes our common-sense conceptual scheme and our pre-theoretic intuitions as much stronger evidence than I think they actually are, and correspondingly takes the deliverances of our best scientific theories much less seriously than I do. I very strongly suspect that their arguments for theism will fit this pattern (reliance on a priori “common-sense” principles like the Principle of Sufficient Reason, for example).
So you’re saying they practice non-naturalized philosophy? Are you sure these are philosophers of religion we’re dealing with and not AIXI instances incentivized by professorships?
Very good diagnosis. While I don’t recall where the philosophers of religion came out in this area on the survey, some of the popular arguments for the existence of God seem to rely on a very strong version of mathematical Platonism, a believe that there is a one true logic/mathematics and that strong conclusions about the world can be drawn by the proper employment of that logic (the use of PSR that you mention is a common, but not the only, example of this). Since I reject that kind of One True Logic (I’m a Carnapian, “in logic there are no morals!” guy), I tend to think that any logical proof of the existence of God (or anything else) serves only to establish that you are using a logic which has a built in “God exists” (or whatever) assumption. For example, the simple modal ontological argument which says God possibly exists, God is a necessary being, so by a few simple steps in S5, God exists; if you’re using S5, then once you’ve made one of the assumptions about God, making the other one just amounts to assuming God exists, and so in effect committing yourself to reasoning only about God worlds. Such a logic may have its uses, but it is incapable of reasoning about the possibility that God might or might not exist; for such purposes a neutral logic would be required.
I will admit to not being all that familiar with contemporary arguments in the philosophy of religion. However, there are other areas of philosophy with which I am quite familiar, and where I regard the debates as basically settled. According to the PhilPapers survey, pluralities of philosophers of religion line up on the wrong side of those debates. For example, philosophers of religion are much more likely (than philosophers in general) to believe in libertarian free will, non-physicalism about the mind, and the A-theory of time (a position that has, for all intents and purposes, been refuted by the theory of relativity). These are not, by the way, issues that are incidental to a philosopher of religion’s area of expertise. I imagine views about the mind, the will and time are integral to most intellectual theistic frameworks.
The fact that these philosophers get things so wrong on these issues considerably reduces my credence that I will find their arguments for God convincing. And this is not just a facile “They’re wrong about these things, so they’re probably wrong about that other thing too” kind of argument. Their views on those issues are indicative of a general philosophical approach --, one that takes our common-sense conceptual scheme and our pre-theoretic intuitions as much stronger evidence than I think they actually are, and correspondingly takes the deliverances of our best scientific theories much less seriously than I do. I very strongly suspect that their arguments for theism will fit this pattern (reliance on a priori “common-sense” principles like the Principle of Sufficient Reason, for example).
I am familiar with the kinds of arguments made by people who adopt this philosophical outlook—not in the case of theism specificially, but in other domains of philosophy—and I don’t find them all that compelling. In fact, I think they represent much of what is pathological about contemporary philosophy. So I think there is sound evidence that philosophers of religion tend to practice a mode of philosophy which, although quite sophisticated and intellectually challenging, is not particularly truth-conducive.
So you’re saying they practice non-naturalized philosophy? Are you sure these are philosophers of religion we’re dealing with and not AIXI instances incentivized by professorships?
Very good diagnosis. While I don’t recall where the philosophers of religion came out in this area on the survey, some of the popular arguments for the existence of God seem to rely on a very strong version of mathematical Platonism, a believe that there is a one true logic/mathematics and that strong conclusions about the world can be drawn by the proper employment of that logic (the use of PSR that you mention is a common, but not the only, example of this). Since I reject that kind of One True Logic (I’m a Carnapian, “in logic there are no morals!” guy), I tend to think that any logical proof of the existence of God (or anything else) serves only to establish that you are using a logic which has a built in “God exists” (or whatever) assumption. For example, the simple modal ontological argument which says God possibly exists, God is a necessary being, so by a few simple steps in S5, God exists; if you’re using S5, then once you’ve made one of the assumptions about God, making the other one just amounts to assuming God exists, and so in effect committing yourself to reasoning only about God worlds. Such a logic may have its uses, but it is incapable of reasoning about the possibility that God might or might not exist; for such purposes a neutral logic would be required.